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+--- Thread: Control the words Control the Culture (/showthread.php?tid=442)
Control the words Control the Culture - 727Sky - 03-21-2023
IMO a great thought provoking video about cultural words
RE: Control the words Control the Culture - Ninurta - 03-22-2023
This can't be stated enough, nor can it even be stated loud enough. George Orwell knew it decades ago when he put "NewSpeak" front and center in "1984" He even explained how a concept is literally "unthinkable" if there were no words to describe it. Words control thoughts, not the other way around.
I got in innumerable debates at TOS. In most of them, the left-wing opponents would invariably try to win the debate by changing the definition of the words used in it, to suit their agenda. I NEVER allowed that, because words have meaning. Language is for the purpose of disseminating those meanings. Or, as my high school English teacher always stressed to us "the purpose of language is to communicate. If you are not communicating, if you are not getting your points across, you are not using an actual language. You are no better than an ape screaming."
She even permitted us to use words like "ain't" when other teachers hammered us for that, because it permitted communication... it was "Language", and that's what she was teaching us - language.
She also strove to teach us to speak to anyone - PhD professor or half-wit street sweeper - at their own level. If you talk beneath their level, they see you as the village idiot and either ignore your words or don't take them seriously, and if you speak above their level, you are unable to get your points across in a manner that they can understand. In both cases, you are not communicating - you are not using intelligible language, you are just another ape screaming in your own non-language.
Thanks, Ms. Gilmer - wherever you are!
So anyhow, at TOS debate opponents would almost always try to change the debate by redefining the words, and I never allowed that. Words have agreed upon meanings, and without that agreed upon meaning, they are not even words - they are just noises. That's why we have dictionaries - to explain what those agreed upon meanings are. When I refused to allow words to be redefined on the fly, they'd hem and haw, run around in circles and make less and less sense, until finally they would accuse me of employing "semantics". You betcha I was. If a word does not have an agreed upon meaning, then it is meaningless. It's just another sound you make with your yapper to push air around. No point in even trying to talk when that is the case.
NEVER allow others to redefine words.
NEVER allow others to set YOUR rules.
NEVER be led around by the nose.
If you use the phrase "illegal aliens", some smartass will almost always come up with the trite phrase "no one is 'illegal'. People cannot be 'illegal'. They are 'undocumented immigrants' ". My ass they are! The answer to that bit of sleight-of-word magic is "Why hell yes those persons ARE 'illegal'! They broke the law to become aliens. Breaking the law is 'illegal'. They are most definitely 'aliens', because they are not from here, and that is what 'alien' means. That makes them by actual definition 'illegal aliens'! They are not 'immigrants', because they didn't go through immigration - that would be the 'legal' route. Get yerself a dictionary and learn what the words 'illegal', 'alien', and 'immigration' mean before you try to correct my speech! Get that plank out of your own damned eye so's you can see before you go poking around trying to get a bit of sawdust out of mine while you're blinded".
.
RE: Control the words Control the Culture - putnam6 - 03-22-2023
It's nothing new, but it is more sophisticated and has melted into numerous media outlets.
Even into the 90's and 2000's it felt like we could at least count on the media to report major news without such obvious bias.
Was rereading Delivered from Evil by Robert Leckie @WWII, anyway, basically, it talks about how Mussolini started as an editor for a nondescript newspaper and was thought to be radical till he grab more and more control of the different newspapers and pretty soon he had following a little influence